Category Archives: National Parks

The Three C’s

Creation, creatures and creativity. The three C’s.  Since visiting the National Arboretum on Sunday, I can’t stop thinking about creation, creatures, and creativity.

The grace of creation is not hard to recognize – there is the profound beauty of the landscape, the blossoming flowers, the painted colors of plants and trees, rocks, lakes, rivers and hills.

The grace in creatures is sometimes more difficult for us to name, for we are the creatures.  Yet, we are graced and we are beautiful!  We are the creations of the Divine who made us as beautiful creatures – perhaps more beautiful than any landscape we can view, if we but knew how to see our own beauty.  It took some great creativity on God’s part in creating us.  And, the amazing thing is, since we are created in God’s image and likeness, we also have some of that same sense of creativity and ability to create.

So when the creature looks at creation and puts their creativity to task – beautiful things can happen.  The Arboretum was full of them.  We saw bonsai trees over 400 years old and Ikebana flower arrangements that took a piece of this and a piece of that to create striking beauty with a combination of single parts.

We must not forget that we also have the ability to create.  Creation, creatures and creativity is a powerful combination.  Let’s use it to show grace to our world.